


In the Midst of My Playground

by jesterlady



Category: Dollhouse
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Episode Related, F/M, Gen, Mental Anguish, Mental Breakdown, Mental Health Issues, Mental Instability, One Shot, Post-Series, Pre-Series, Series Spoilers, Stream of Consciousness, Technology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-10
Updated: 2011-11-10
Packaged: 2017-10-25 21:57:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/275250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jesterlady/pseuds/jesterlady
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Topher's story.  From childhood to the pulse.  His relationship with his tech and his people and how they intertwine.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Midst of My Playground

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own DH. The title is by John Bunyan

Topher had never been good with people. His mom mentioned it off hand one day to a family friend and he remembered sitting across the room from the other children and writing up his algebra homework, while they played, and hearing that. He was nine at the time. It's perhaps why he had so many toys in his office. He didn't have time for things like that when he was younger.

He had one close friend in high school, but not close enough to shut out the threats and comments that he received from the other students. He couldn't help being tiny for high school - he was four grades ahead of other people his age. Amelia was the name of his friend. She had skipped a grade herself, but was extremely tall for her age, and her mom let him come over to the house exactly three times in their senior year. The rest of the time they would go to the park if it was sunny or the mall if it was raining and do their homework or exchange ideas for the future.

Amelia married a grade A jerk right out of high school. Topher wasn't invited to the wedding, so he didn't give her the gift he'd made. He smashed it in the woods and now he can't remember what it was. He never bothered to make friends at university. He just got degree after degree as quickly as he could.

He discovered his true love in neuroscience. The human brain was his friend in a way that no one else in his life ever was. Even when it was acting strangely or too complex for him to conquer immediately, it was a friend and he never wanted anything else. He just wanted unlimited access to the human brain - as many as he could get.

When he heard about the Dollhouse, he scoffed. He'd been brought up to disprove urban legends, not join them. But as the evidence kept presenting itself with unequaled results, his intrigue grew to conquer his incredulity. He was handpicked from his class, tested, interviewed, and hired within a week. He expected wonders and he received them. He also revolutionized the place within a year.

Ivy was a good kid. He said kid to himself in spite of the fact that she was only two years younger than him. She was eager to learn, not eager to submit, yet willing to back down when she needed to. He didn't like her for that. She was too much of what he wasn't. So he ignored her for the most part, using her as a sounding board, a gofer, a scapegoat when needed. But he could never quite forget her excellence and it ate away at the back of his mind when he bothered to pay attention.

Saunders was different. She fascinated him and, true, that was mostly because he had made her, but there was something new in the equation with her. Her disdain was like a flame to his moth and he wondered at how truly masochistic he was to keep coming back to her cutting remarks. They made him stronger, he told himself, and didn't question it anymore than that. 

DeWitt was like a fierce version of his mom. He didn't think about that anymore than he could help. She scared the crap out of him, but he'd taught himself to never bend down to authority. His quick wit and huge brain saved him whenever he was in her presence. Yet, there was always something about her mouth, something that spoke so strongly of a sense of humor. Sometimes she would look at him, especially when Dominic was being an ass, and there was an understanding there. It was a shame she was such a hardass in other respects. Though there were moments when she looked at him and he could swear she felt pity and he hated that more than her rigidity.

He didn't feel anything for Dominic other than an extreme dislike and he didn't bother to hide it or try to analyze it. The man wasn't worth it. Not even when he was discovered to be a spy. Then, though Topher disliked the idea of sending anyone to the Attic, he didn't shrink from doing it.

Boyd was a different story. The man was an enigma, full of disdain for the Dollhouse, but working there anyway. Seeming to not care about Echo and then protecting her at all costs. Mild-mannered and quiet, but smart, and knowledgeable about way more than an ex-cop should be. Topher couldn't help but like him and considered him his only friend, even wanted his respect, though he tried not to show that.

The Dolls, well, they were Dolls and Topher thought of them as such. They had no personality, no thoughts higher than that they liked their treatments and what time fitness class was. They couldn't remember his genius, and perhaps that's why he was annoyed by them. He wanted equals and he couldn't find them anywhere. Not within the science or the nerdom or the plain human interaction. It was hard to be a genius. Hard and lonely.

Echo, Sierra, and Victor were Dolls he got to work with more often than anyone else and they also caused more trouble. Echo glitched more than any Doll he'd ever heard of. Sierra and Victor's constant gravitation towards each other gave him more than one headache. He still thought of them as things rather than people.

Everything seemed to fall apart at once though it actually spanned many months. Alpha's composite event and maniacal spree, Echo's continual journey of self-development, the scrutiny from the higher ups, the developing lack of control over the tech, the breaking into the Dollhouse by Ballard, Echo's kidnapping by Alpha.

Then it was like everything was normal again, except it wasn't. Topher didn't know what it was, but he ignored it like everyone else did. Ballard was ensconced in the Dollhouse, smug and self-righteous and slightly witty. Topher didn't want him to have redeeming qualities, yet the man did. Topher didn't want to be reminded of his own lack of them.

Saunders was another lack and Topher didn't know what to think on that score. Her show in his room had terrified him. He who programmed Dolls to love and sleep with other people, didn't want a Doll for himself. Especially not one who loathed him, no matter what she said. Not one who he'd seen love another man. Not one whose identity was so vitally in question. She, he couldn't understand at all, for all that he'd made her.

He'd always thought DeWitt was like a den mother, ruthless and yet ridiculously protective of those under her charge. It gave him a kind of comfort that he tucked away unconsciously. Then she let Sierra be taken and Topher had felt good about Sierra. He'd fixed her, he'd helped her come to a better place, and he always remembered his last birthday with a glow of satisfaction. He felt betrayed and helpless.

He thought he knew everything about the brain, including the fact that nobody knew everything about the brain. But he'd been fooled and Sierra was paying for it. Topher took a risk and knew how ironic it was that he was the one taking it. He had morals, he did. He never stepped on butterflies or stole money and if he torrented things off the Internet it was because of the outrageous wait times and prices placed by society. He could make better rules and that's why he worked in the Dollhouse. But other people were supposed to handle the moral decisions, and then, he suddenly had to.

He honestly didn't know who he was anymore when Priya took a beer from him and asked him questions that were penetrating his walls of denial. He had a secret that was too hard for him to live with and the stench of blood seemed to be entrenched in his nostrils for all time. If this was what it meant to help people, then it was too hard. Yet, he didn't know if he could ever go back to the way it was.

Moral quandaries seemed to be the order of the day from then on. There he was, across country, doing something way too covert ops for him to be the star performer. Yet then he met her and that's where life stopped cold. She was everything he wanted Ivy to be, yet with something else. Her words were stammered even more than his. Her glasses and chain, her sling, her barrette: they were all shiny beacons of hope to him. Of course, she was a lunatic. Oh, he could have seen that coming. He hit her face and marveled that she went out at one blow, that he could do that, idly thinking that Ivy would have lasted longer. He wished he could have at least kissed Bennett.

But life went on because there was research to be done and while he still protected Sierra and Victor, almost without knowing it, he simply enjoyed being able to be the genius he was. There was literally nothing he could not do. His quips and findings were at the top of their game. Except there was something hiding underneath, this feeling of unease in the pit of his stomach. This feeling that he could go too far and that they definitely were going too far and what if he ended up like the hydrogen bomb man? What was his name again? When DeWitt – Adelle - betrayed him, he had never been so petrified in his life. He'd never realized how much he'd trusted her and depended on her. How much she'd meant to him.

Then life was an operation of secrecy and, while he loved secrets, ones that his life depended on were not fun. Neither was another invasion by Alpha or Echo's all too knowing eyes or Adelle's hard, lifeless face. It wasn't until Victor, Sierra, and Echo were gone, trapped in the hell of the Attic, and Paul was presenting a new problem for him to solve, that his loneliness broke over him.

At that point he remembered Ivy and he remembered her worth, but it was like she changed, like a body snatcher took her over, and his life and his job and his entire value as a human being were gone. The tech was his partner, but it could backstab him at any moment. He made more moral decisions every minute and he knew without a shadow of a doubt that his tech couldn't be let loose on the world. He made a stand on what side of the sand he wanted to be on.

It was funny how something simple like that could bring everyone back together, or at least seem to. Adelle had been acting, the others escaped the Attic, his own genius saved Paul, Ivy was a friend again. They went to war.

In war there were casualties. He'd never thought it would be her. He kidnapped her, after having already hit her, then she hit him and everything clicked. She stopped being a lunatic and he stopped being afraid and even though it hurt, there was never anything so perfect in the entire world as her kiss. They were the geek love of the century whose brains could literally take over the world, till his creation backfired and Saunders put Bennett some place so far that even he couldn't save her.

Adelle was being motherly again, but that was second place to the loss of a mind so powerful it rivaled his own, the scarlet burn of blood on his cheek, or a body that they took and put somewhere that he didn't know. He had to focus, had to breathe, had to think about her later. War was horrible, just ask Tony. Topher didn't want to be good anymore, but now he couldn't be anything but. She'd been perfect in the end.

He didn't think anymore, thinking only brought about the tech and the war and the end of the world. But he acted. Because he knew that Ivy couldn't continue in this war, couldn't end up like Bennett, couldn't end up like him, because he ruined everything he touched and she was too good for that. Being cruel to be kind was necessary, Adelle had taught him that, and so he forced her out and didn't think about her tears or her touch or her questions or her jewelry. He would be untouchable.

Except old wounds were always there. When Boyd turned out to be the original tormentor, cracks started to form inside Topher's mind. He felt them spread. His man friend, his rock of dependability, the one person who no one would have ever doubted; was the killer of Bennett because Clyde/Saunders/Whiskey could not be held responsible for his/her/their actions. It hurt like hell, it felt weird, it felt ironic and right to be holding his disruptor to Boyd's head. At least Echo was the one who placed the grenade in his hand.

It was over. It should have been over. Rossum was done, the tech was destroyed, even if all the designs were imprinted in Topher's head and he didn't think they could ever be erased even with his increasing inability to focus on what he was feeling. But they couldn't rest because there were other Dollhouses and the body of the snake to be dealt with. He felt so tired and he just wanted to cry like a little girl and if only someone would tell him where Bennett had been taken.

The war never stopped after that. It just kept going. His brain kept working even when Topher wished it wouldn't. Tony and Priya did their googly-eyed thing and Adelle grew harder and softer if that was possible. Echo and Paul were like one person and yet so distant from each other. He wanted to scream at them sometimes and tell them that wasting someone's time and being afraid wasn't the way to act. A bullet could change life in a micro second. Love was important and Topher found he loved each of these people. For the first time in his life he loved people because he wanted to, because he knew their worth. It wasn't because they were family and he loved them because he was supposed to. They had each proved themselves to him. He set out to prove himself to them.

He worked off the concept of using tech to defeat tech. He'd never been one to ignore an advantage and the simple fact had to be faced that his brain was the biggest advantage their side had. Sometimes he wondered if that was a bad idea. They traveled everywhere, running, guerilla style warfare. Eventually, when they ran out of places to go, they holed up in their Dollhouse. Saunders was with them after Topher had wiped Clyde out of Whiskey's body and restored the good doctor. He couldn't look at her anymore. She didn't seek out his company either though she did apologize once. He didn't like that memory.

That's when the thought-pocalypse started and it was his fault. It was all his fault. He was trying to fix it - and he had been so careful not to leave anything lying around - but there was a spy, and no one caught him until it was too late. Then the plans were gone and the ringing of the telephone was the shot heard round the world. 

That was probably the moment that drove him crazy. He knew he was insane, but he couldn't help it. His brain wasn't his friend anymore and the people who were his friends, (his family), couldn't hold his focus and all that mattered was the tech and the problem. There was too much to worry about without wasting brain power on eating or rational conversation. He missed that life, deep inside, but he couldn't focus on it.

Sometimes he could hear the others talking and they would express concern over him. One day Adelle said that his genius mind had concocted the perfect punishment for what it considered its sins. It tried to erase itself and be like the other people he'd erased. Somewhere inside he liked the thought of that, but he found he didn't have the mental power to think about it too much.

Adelle was completely melted now where he was concerned and he could laugh inside at the irony. Oh, but how he clung to her. She cared for him when everyone else was busy killing things, hiding from the butchers, foraging for supplies. They were barricaded in the Dollhouse and he created a sanctuary for himself in one of the pods. It was November's, he thought. He surrounded it with the things he needed to fix the problem, or just reminders. Toys, books, a Tin Man because symbolism wasn't lost on him yet. The lab wasn't his anymore, there were too many ghosts of his imprints, the chair who was not his friend, and her blood, he could still see her blood.

When he went on the trek to Safehaven, he hadn't wanted to leave his things. He babbled, he could tell he babbled, about how he needed them. But Adelle had taken him firmly in hand and he had let her feed him pills because they brought a sweet oblivion to his hurried, crowded, frantic mind. It was hard and there was so much pain there. So much hurt to see in the world. People everywhere who had been ruined by his arrogance. But when they got to the end - it was safe. It was better. There was T to distract him and nothing electrical in sight. No tech. No chair. Just wood and dust and Adelle and the others.

But the war was still going on and Topher cried the day that Priya told Tony he had to leave the tech or leave her. Tony left and Topher played with T because the boy was the only constant thing in his world. All the rest of them were too busy fighting. Tony visited sometimes and he brought more and more tech with him each time. Topher tried to avoid it, he cringed at the sight. No more tech, the tech was the problem, even though he ached to take the shiny metal and gleaming circuits in his hand and make something the world had never seen before. That was the problem. He knew what he knew.

One day Ivy showed up and Topher kissed her before he thought about it. He hadn't planned on it, but she was there and she was alive and she was herself. That was everything; especially after all he'd done to her. He apologized over and over and held onto her until she forgave him. She looked at him with pity in her eyes and he could tell her brain was as sharp and uncluttered as ever. That was better, that was why he'd made her go. She kissed him back, but she was traveling with a group of people and they were on a mission and she couldn't stay.

“Don't pick up any phones,” he told her as she went. “Don't be me. I don't want any more juice boxes. I don't want any more. I don't want any more.”

“Topher,” she said firmly and he stopped. His head felt almost clear. “Topher, you can fix this. You are the smartest man in the world. I know you can put the world back.”

“I know what I know,” he said in return, but it was less a desperate cry and more of a self-confident proclamation. 

Then he'd been taken away and harsh lights were there and Adelle didn't come to help him. There was tech there. His old love, his old friend. It was beautiful, a gruesome reunion. He couldn't create like that. There were people huddled all around him and too many guns. His old enemies were there and they told him things, things he understood too well, even though it made no sense to him. The people, their heads were smashed by the bullets and they didn't cry out, they were like _her_. He couldn't work like that. He wasn't built for this. He'd been chosen for his lack of morality, but now the morals crowded his head and didn't let him work. But Ivy's words were written inside and then...then they started to grow.

Paul and Echo found him and he knew exactly what was supposed to happen. He wasn't strong anymore, but he was the smartest man on the planet. Someone had told him that once. He couldn't keep up, but he had the plan. He was going to put the world back. But he needed something. Just one more thing. They believed him. It was good to be believed. There was something so familiar about that little girl, but he couldn't think about that, there was too much to do. Too much to fix and build and create. All words which were synonymous with Topher Brink.

Back at his birth and his destruction, he could focus more clearly. He could work out exactly what needed to happen. It was like the old days. No more Whiskey, no, he heard whispers about her death. But Alpha was there and so much more kind than serial killers should be. Tony and Priya were so close; he could see it, so close. The victory he'd fought for on behalf of Victor and Sierra would soon be won. Echo was alone, stoic, and he wanted to tell her that he'd foreseen this, but what good would it do? Paul was with Bennett now, and Boyd and November/Mellie/Madeline/November. 

He worked it all out and the guns didn't let him think, but they took the guns away and it was okay. She helped him one more time. She was so good about that, even from beyond the grave. He knew the ultimate end game, but he didn't tell Adelle for as long as possible. She didn't need that pain. He'd caused so much pain. He'd made the world bleed and it didn't make it any better when you got to name the apocalypse. He clung to his mother, to Adelle, for just one brief moment and he gathered his strength to fulfill Alpha's request, because a genius could only destroy so much before he had to make amends. After ruining Echo's life, he could give her someone to help her not be alone.

He climbed up the elevator and the weight of the tech felt good on his back. It was a reminder of where he'd come from and where he was going. He could set things up like the pulse in his sleep. He was that good. He didn't even have to be fully sane. But there was something more interesting than the tech in that room. It was the pictures on the wall. Before he knew it he was moving towards it and focused on it and feeling pleasure because of it. The tech didn't interest him anymore, only the people. Maybe it was because he'd had to focus on the tech to cleanse his sins and now that was coming to completion. Either way, even muddled, his brain could register all the ones he loved before the pulse went off. 

His mother was wrong. Topher Brink was great with people.


End file.
